How do you take advantage of such promotion? We’ve been throwing the net wide to capture the rising number of persons interested in this religious congregation after watching the one-hour interview. The show aired Wednesday, and the next day visits to the website of VisitationSpirit.org has jumped tenfold. Here’s what we did to make the best of this:

• Put up the video interview on our client’s website the next morning.
• Put links on the website’s home page to the embedded TV interview
• Encouraged website visitors to sign up for the newsletter.
• Made a full-page-width cover photo of the interview on their Facebook page.
• Made Facebook page posts about the interview.
• Ran Facebook pay-per-click ads announcing the show in advance, and afterwards telling others how to watch the show. We used demographic and interest targeting.

There’s a lot of new interest in this religious congregation now, and it has engaged existing users and friends. New people are signing up for the Sunday night “Live Jesus Chat Room.” We hope it gives them the boost that they need in their promotion efforts.

We let conventional design fly by the wayside as we placed the enlarged words “Passion” in the fancy Informal Roman font, splashed across the top banner.

We also redesigned their logo, which has a heart and two hands. Check out their website at Passion for Social Justice.

“The work Kevin did for us exceeded my expectations for more reasons than one.

1. “It is very difficult to even find a web guy that answers his phone.  Kevin always answered and returned messages within the hour.
2. “Web guys always seem to need you to babysit the project.  Kevin never waited for me to call, he was always communicating making sure I was pleased.
3. “Web guys are often over priced and full of excuses. From my first conversation with Kevin he never exceeded our contracted agreement and went beyond the call of duty to fulfill my expectations.

“Hire this man for your next web project!”

1. “It is very difficult to even find a web guy that answers his phone.  Kevin always answered and returned messages within the hour.
2. “Web guys always seem to need you to babysit the project.  Kevin never waited for me to call, he was always communicating making sure I was pleased.
3. “Web guys are often over priced and full of excuses. From my first conversation with Kevin he never exceeded our contracted agreement and went beyond the call of duty to fulfill my expectations.

“Hire this man for your next web project!”

— Jake MacAuley, about the website built at Sons of Liberty Media (July 22, 2011)

— J. F., about Defend Marriage Illinois. (July 2, 2011)

Although the score is below the fiftieth percentile, this isn’t bad considering that was is lacking is mainly more content, or blog posts. The site consists of two main pages, and now has only three posts. New posts will be made every few days by editor Leon Suprenant. The website, which sports a fluid width, features an attractive banner designed by artist Peter Ptak, and is done in an attractive mix of black, read, blue and yellow colors.

The site’s ranking should increase in the months ahead. Website Grader provides a ranking of marketing effectiveness, and uses an algorithm of a proprietary blend of over 50 different variables, including search engine data , website structure, approximate traffic, site performance, and others.

An Undivided Heart provides freshly-written news from the Vatican, religious communities, and other sources about consecrated life in the Catholic Church. The site is sponsored by the Institute on Religious Life in Libertyville, IL. We wish them well on their new outreach.

That confusion is a bit like Search Engine Optimization (SEO) itself — Google’s algorithms are always changing and growing, and you get stumped sometimes trying to keep up with them. The two dozen people who came this morning to the office of software training school Digitial Bootcamp, just north of the loop, heard Bob Tripathi, the in-house SEO/SEM manager for Sears Holding. His topic was “Managing SEO in-house at mid- to large-sized organizations.”

The group, made up of SEO practitioners, learned that Google now posts Twitter material, and this is a new way to get publicity.

Among lots of good information about SEO, Bob outlined five common SEO mistakes:

1. Poor information architecture, such as bad site navigation, incorrect directory structures, and wrong naming conventions,
2. Wrong Content Management Systems (CMS), that give poor titles, headings and meta-tags,
3. Poor redirects,
4. Unfriendly URL’s. Don’t name them folder1, for example,
5. Poor SEO measurement tools. This is a more difficult task than measuring pay-per-click.

Some of the current trends in SEO are:

• Your Twitter profile authority has SEO authority. Google will keep up your Twitter post for two to three weeks.
• Video is ubiquitous. Host the file on your server.
• Use social media in website design.
• Link building — don’t use link bait anymore. Incentivise, such as giving a blogger a $2 Facebook gift, and maybe she’ll return the favor by giving your product a link.

It was more than just a talk — there was a lively interchange of questions throughout the talk, and lots of networking. I met several new friends afterwards.

For more information on the group, go to Chicago SEO Meetup.

— Sister Dorothy Ann, Sisters of the Sorrowful Mother (Jan. 14, 2011)

— Paul Buchheit, (Mar. 3, 2010) www.boomerboys.org

This is a question asked more times than the number of stars in the sky. If you’re in Chicago Jan. 15 and you want to learn about Search Engine Optimization (SEO), you might want to go to the lecture by top SEO expert Bob Tripathi, Sears Holding Co. marketing manager. Bob will talk about doing SEO in-house, along with pay-per-click, and the various needs that should be met. Bob is one of the experts speaking at SES New York, the Leading Search & Social Marketing Event.

To sign up for the Chicago event, go to the Chicago Search Engine Optimization Meetup Group.